Top Tier Admissions
I recently finished the book 10 to 25: The Science of Motivating Young People by David Yeager and was struck by how relevant the content is to my work with students. I found myself highlighting so many quotes, page after page. While the book isn’t about college admissions, it could have been. Much of my […]
Rice University, a private research university in Houston, Texas, anchors undergraduate life in a residential college system that houses students for all four years and maintains a roughly 6-to-1 student-faculty ratio. The university admitted 2,984 of 38,603 applicants to the Class of 2030 for an overall acceptance rate of 7.7%, according to the Rice Thresher. […]
The junior year of high school intimidates students long before it arrives. It looms like a bully, threatening total exhaustion, unimaginably difficult classes, and high expectations. But students forget that each year of high school prepares them for the next; they have been building the skills and prerequisite knowledge one year at a time. But […]
Every spring, families watch acceptance rates drop a little further — and ask the same question: what does it actually take? The 2025–26 cycle offered some answers. Admissions offices are reading more carefully, cross-referencing more deliberately, and growing more skilled at identifying what’s genuine versus what’s been engineered to impress. We recently hosted a webinar […]
Massachusetts Institute of Technology, a private research university in Cambridge, Massachusetts, ranks No. 2 among national universities and No. 1 for undergraduate engineering, according to U.S. News & World Report 2026 Best Colleges rankings. For the Class of 2030, MIT admitted 1,299 of 28,349 applicants for an overall acceptance rate of 4.58% — a slight […]
The Senior Year Roadmap
Every deadline from August to May – test dates, applications. decisions – in one place. Signup to download the full 9-page Senior Year Roadmap (PDF)